A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

One of the great fears many of us face is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the end that we have wasted our life. In A Guide to the Good Life, William B. Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives. In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a refreshing presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life.

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living

Why have history's greatest minds - from George Washington to Frederick the Great to Ralph Waldo Emerson along with today's top performers, from Super Bowl-winning football coaches to CEOs and celebrities - embraced the wisdom of the ancient Stoics? Because they realize that the most valuable wisdom is timeless and that philosophy is for living a better life, not a classroom exercise. The Daily Stoic offers a daily devotional of Stoic insights and exercises, featuring all-new translations.

The Heart Goes Last

Margaret Atwood puts the human heart to the ultimate test in an utterly brilliant new novel that is as visionary as The Handmaid's Tale and as richly imagined as The Blind Assassin. Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around - and fast.

The Plot Against America

In an astonishing feat of empathy and narrative invention, our most ambitious novelist imagines an alternate version of American history. In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected president. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

City on Fire

New York. 1977. Be there when it explodes. It's New Year's Eve, 1976, and New York is a city on the edge. As midnight approaches, a blizzard sets in - and amidst the fireworks, an unmistakable sound rings out across Central Park. Gunshots. Two of them. The search for the shooter will bring together a rich cast of New Yorkers. From the reluctant heirs to one of the city's greatest fortunes to a couple of Long Island kids drawn to the punk scene downtown.

Meditations

One of the most significant books ever written by a head of State, the Meditations are a collection of philosophical thoughts by the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180 ce). Covering issues such as duty, forgiveness, brotherhood, strength in adversity and the best way to approach life and death, the Meditations have inspired thinkers, poets and politicians since their first publication more than 500 years ago. Today, the book stands as one of the great guides and companions - a cornerstone of Western thought.

Ego Is the Enemy

"While the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their images with sheer, almost irrational force, I've found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition." (From the prologue)

Letters from a Stoic

feel that I am being not only reformed, but transformed. I do not yet, however, assure myself, or indulge the hope, that there are no elements left in me which need to be changed. Of course there are many that should be brought into greater prominence. And indeed this very fact is proof that my spirit is altered into something better, that it can see its own faults, of which it was previously ignorant. In certain cases sick men are congratulated because they themselves have perceived that they are sick.

The Sellout

Born in Dickens, Los Angeles, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in his father's racially charged psychological studies. He is told that his father's memoir will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed, he discovers there never was a memoir. Fuelled by despair, he sets out to right this wrong with the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.

The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

The Art of Learning takes listeners through Waitzkin's unique journey to excellence. He explains in clear detail how a well-thought-out, principled approach to learning is what separates success from failure. Waitzkin believes that achievement, even at the championship level, is a function of a lifestyle that fuels a creative, resilient growth process.

Sapiens

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it. Us. We are the most advanced and most destructive animals ever to have lived. What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us sapiens? In this bold and provocative audiobook, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here, and where we're going.

Stoner: A Novel

Waterstone's book of the year. Colum McCann once called Stoner one of the great forgotten novels of the past century, but it seems it is forgotten no longer - in 2013, translations of Stoner began appearing on best-seller lists across Europe. William Stoner enters the University of Missouri at 19 to study agriculture. A seminar on English literature changes his life, and he never returns to work on his father's farm. Stoner becomes a teacher. He marries the wrong woman.

A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment

It's the late 1960s, and homosexuality has only just been legalised, and Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, has a secret he's desperate to hide. As long as Norman Scott, his beautiful, unstable lover is around, Thorpe's brilliant career is at risk. With the help of his fellow politicians, Thorpe schemes, deceives and embezzles - until he can see only one way to silence Scott for good. The trial of Jeremy Thorpe changed our society forever: it was the moment the British public discovered the truth about its political class.

Exposure

By the Sunday Times best-selling author of The Lie. Forbidden love, intimate betrayal and the devastating power of exposure drive Helen Dunmore's remarkable new title. London, November 1960: the Cold War is at its height. Spy fever fills the newspapers, and the political establishment knows how and where to bury its secrets. When a highly sensitive file goes missing, Simon Callington is accused of passing information to the Soviets and arrested.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Author of the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy is one of the most provocative American stylists to emerge in the last century. The striking novel Blood Meridian offers an unflinching narrative of the brutality that accompanied the push west on the 1850s Texas frontier.

Nutshell

Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master. To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things?

Purity

A magnum opus for our morally complex times from the author of Freedom and The Corrections. Young Pip Tyler doesn't know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she's saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she's squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother - her only family - is hazardous. But she doesn't have a clue who her father is, why her mother has always concealed her own real name, or how she can ever have a normal life.

Publisher's Summary

The setting is Atlanta, Georgia - a racially mixed, late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth and wily politicians. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta conglomerate king whose outsize ego has at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 29,000 acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife - and a half-empty office complex with a staggering load of debt.

Meanwhile, Conrad Hensley, idealistic young father of two, is laid off from his job at the Croker Global Foods warehouse near Oakland and finds himself spiraling into the lower depths of the American legal system. And back in Atlanta, when star Georgia Tech running back Fareek "the Cannon" Fanon, a homegrown product of the city's slums, is accused of date-raping the daughter of a pillar of the white establishment, upscale black lawyer Roger White II is asked to represent Fanon and help keep the city's delicate racial balance from blowing sky-high.Networks of illegal Asian immigrants criss-crossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real estate syndicates - Wolfe shows us contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most admired novelist. Charlie Croker's deliverance from his tribulations provides an unforgettable denouement to the most widely awaited, hilarious and telling novel America has seen in ages - Tom Wolfe's most outstanding achievement to date.

The narrator is excellent and the story is absorbing but I don't think a Tom Wolfe book can be abridged successfully. I was left holding threads that had no end and jumps in the story that jarred the natural progression of the two main characters.

Why aren’t there more Tom Wolfe books on Audible? He’s such an amazing writer. No one observes the subtle battlegrounds of human interaction better than he. Whether it's Charley Coker in a **** measuring contest with his banker in A Man In Full or Charlotte Simmons deciding to "go all the way" in I Am Charlotte Simmons, I'm always struck by how Wolfe can see the subtle chess moves in our day to day human transactions.

And yet, I’m dissatisfied and Wolfe’s prodigious talent is one reason I am. When I finished the book, my first impression was that it felt truncated, as though pieces were missing. I checked at Audible.com and, sure enough, the book was abridged. Why is a writer this remarkable and celebrated being abridged? I would have gladly spent the time to listen to the entire book. It’s just wrong to tamper with an author’s work.

I have to agree with everyone on this forum who said that David Ogden Stiers did a world class job on the narration. Apparently this was the first book he ever did. Let’s hope he does many, many more. Right now, he’s right up there with Patrick Tull who narrates Patrick O’Brian’s fabulous Master And Commander series.

A wonderful book, but please, please release it in an unabridged form.

19 of 20 people found this review helpful

Daniel

Suwanee, GA, USA

29/12/08

Overall

"The point is..."

The point is to buy and then listen to the entire book. Be sure to look for the unabridged version if it's even available. I had read "A Man in Full" when it came out. My wife had never read any of Wolfe's work. We were off on a holiday drive and thought it'd be great entertainment. There is an entire piece of the intertwined story missing! As well as some other details and insights that I definitely missed. I have lived in Atlanta and actually met the author at a cocktail party. I guess I feel like some of the value of the work is diminished. Yes, Wolfe may at times be a bit wordy in his narratives but that's also part of the charm of his observations. We enjoyed Ogden-Stiers in his reading. He is tougher to listen to in the female characters' voice though. Overall, a story that has much that is dead-on regarding Atlanta and in greater measure the types of people in this city and elsewhere. "Man" would have been a good movie if cast properly. I assume The Bonfire of the Vanities film disaster may have scared Hollywood away. Good, but leaves you a bit empty.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Josep

BARCELONA, N/A, Spain

08/12/03

Overall

"About the Narrator"

On top of an original and well written story, I was particularly amazed by how well the narrator did his job: the man is an ARTIST. What other books has he read??? Can't find any other title in the Audible.com database but I sure would like to listen more of his work regardless of the book title.

15 of 17 people found this review helpful

Diane M. Friary

17/03/09

Overall

"Loved it!"

Great Tale! And the reader's Southern accents for the different characters is delightful. Even though this is abridged, the story stays together. It just made me want to buy the unabridged version next. Tom Wolfe has an uncanny way of connecting the most farfetched events and saving his characters in a perfectly reasonable but unexpected way from impossible predicaments.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Murdo

EDINBURGHUnited Kingdom

30/12/05

Overall

"An amazing piece of work"

This book, which I had read and thus knew already, was an extremely enjoyable listen. The reading by David Ogden Stiers was extraordinary, and did full justice to a unique story and the characters therein.

Wonderful!

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Christophe

SAULXURESFrance

30/12/05

Overall

"Most excellent reading!"

David Ogden Stiers is such a great reader that you really feel you belong to the story. Don't miss that one. I chose this title because of other listeners' comments. Don't believe the hype, only trust audible personal reviews! Most excellent listening!

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

jose

14/09/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Abridged! This makes the book terrible!"

I dont want to rate TW low, so he still got 4-stars. But this abridged version is awful and makes the book seem lazy and cheap.

I did not realize it was abridged until after I bough and listened to the whole thing. My 1st impression was that TW got lazy and wrote a quick-and-dirty novel

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Whipsnead

Port Townsend, WA, US

30/04/12

Overall

Performance

Story

"A man in transformation"

Tom Wolfe loves to find a man at the top of his game and show us once again thathubris and egocentricitiy can bring anyone down. Often, however, there is a form ofrebirth, with a glimmer of hope that all was for the best. During the journey we meet interesting characters and unusual situations. He is a master of bringing together multiple subplots. I had originally read a Man in Full unabridged. As it had been awhile I purchased this abridged audio version. The contraction was well done. The narration was superb.While being very entertaining, the listener also learns much about a unique major American City.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Jeff

Saint Paul, MN, USA

16/02/04

Overall

"The narrator...."

I've read the book, so I'll agree with the five stars. Just wanted to chime in that, if I'm not mistaken, the narrator who so impressed the other reviewer was an actor on M.A.S.H. (the TV show, not the movie).

4 of 7 people found this review helpful

Abraham Haak

20/02/05

Overall

"The Voice"

I found myself looking for ANY readings by Mr. Stiers, even if they were from "Better Homes and Gardens." Fine characterizations and a very comfortable voice to listen to. More evocative than a movie.
It didn't hurt that the novel is masterfully written.

5 of 9 people found this review helpful

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